Ghaziabad: A court has convicted a Loni man in a 12-year-old case of rape and abduction of a minor and sentenced him to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment. The court said the sentence would be adjusted against the period he has already spent in jail.A missing complaint was filed at Loni police station by the survivor’s father on Nov 22, 2014. He told the police that his 12-year-old daughter had gone missing the previous day. A case was registered under sections 363 (kidnapping) and 366 IPC (kidnapping a woman to compel her for marriage or illicit intercourse). After 26 days of investigation and digital surveillance, police found the girl with Bunty alias Prem Kiran Kashyap. Section 376 IPC and Section 4/6 Pocso Act were added to the FIR, and a chargesheet was filed on Jan 9, 2015. The court framed charges on Nov 18.In court, the prosecution presented the girl’s father, the survivor and a neighbour who had seen her and Bunty together on the day of the kidnapping.The defence counsel argued that there was a delay in the registration of the FIR and pointed to the medical report that was inconclusive about the penetrative sexual assault of the minor.Special public prosecutor Satish Sharma argued that the survivor remained with the accused for 26 days and the nature of the crime was such that there cannot be any eyewitnesses other than the survivor. Moreover, he said that the defence counsel failed to prove that the girls’ family had a prior animosity against his family to implicate him in the case.The court relied upon the testimony of the survivor, who remained consistent in her statements given to the police, the magistrate and the court, and rejected the defence argument. It further noted that the survivor’s statement under Section 161 of CrPC states that Bunty had sexual intercourse with her multiple times without her consent.Judge Poonam-II convicted Bunty to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 20,000 under Section 376(2) of the IPC and to five years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5,000 under Section 366 of the IPC. However, she noted that statements recorded in court do not mention the accused having sexual intercourse with her multiple times. “Therefore, Bunty was not found to have met the essential elements of sections 5(l) or 5(m) of the Pocso Act and acquitted in those sections,” the court ruled.
